A U.S. judge on Monday ordered Google to allow rival app stores to access its Android smartphone operating system, another legal defeat for the tech giant.
This ruling stems from Google’s defeat in an antitrust lawsuit filed by Google. fortnite Creator Epic Games says a California jury has found that Google has an illegal monopoly over the Android Play Store. A San Francisco jury handed down a swift verdict against Google in December, concluding that the company employed illegal strategies to maintain its dominant position in the Android app market.
The order, which Google is appealing, adds to a series of legal challenges facing the company, including an August ruling in which another federal judge ruled that Google’s search engine also constitutes an illegal monopoly.
Google is also embroiled in a separate antitrust case in Virginia over its control over online advertising.
The latest ruling bars Google from engaging in several practices deemed anticompetitive by a jury for the next three years. These practices include revenue-sharing agreements with potential competitors and restrictions that force developers to launch apps only on the Play Store.
The judge also ordered the creation of a three-person technical committee tasked with overseeing the implementation of these changes and resolving potential disputes.
This injunction poses a significant challenge to Google’s dominance in the Android app ecosystem and could reshape the mobile app market in the coming years.
Google’s appeal
Google announced its intention to appeal the ruling and requested that the injunction be suspended while the appeal is reviewed.
Lee Ann Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, said: “We look forward to continuing our case in the appellate courts, and we hope to continue to make the case for developers, device manufacturers, and the billions of Android users around the world. I will continue to insist on what is best.”
Android is currently installed on approximately 70% of the world’s smartphones. Smartphone manufacturers can use Android for free, but they must keep the Play Store on the home screen and preinstall other Google apps.
The jury found that Google engaged in illegal activity to ensure that the Play Store was the only platform used to pay for third-party apps, including: fortniteI was able to make it.
Video games make up a large portion of app store revenue, and Epic Games has long sought the ability to process payments for games such as: fortnite Outside of Google and Apple’s app stores, fees can be as high as 30%.
Epic lost a similar case against Apple, but in that case a different judge ruled largely in favor of the iPhone maker.
Both Google and Apple maintain that their app store fees are industry standard and cover benefits such as security, broad reach, and protection from malware.
Google also claimed that its agreements with smartphone makers made its Android devices more competitive with Apple’s iPhone. However, the trial revealed that Google generates tens of billions of dollars in revenue through the Play Store.
To maintain its app store monopoly, Google paid a portion of its revenue to smartphone manufacturers in exchange for turning the Play Store into an app-only payment gateway.
